Senior social workers have
given warning of the dangers posed by a new government register that
will store the details of every child in England from next year.

They fear that the database,
containing the address, medical and school details of all under-18s,
could be used to harm the children whom it is intended to protect.

The Association of Directors
of Children’s Services (ACDS) has written to officials outlining
its “significant” concerns about the new system, called
ContactPoint, The Times has learnt. Confusion over who is responsible
for vetting users and policing the system “may allow a situation
where an abuser could be able to access ContactPoint for illegitimate
purposes with limited fear of any repercussions”, Richard Stiff,
the chairman of the ADCS Information Systems and Technology Policy Committee,
said.

The security fears are fuelled
further by the admission that information about the children of celebrities
and politicians is likely to be excluded from the system.

The database, which goes
live next year, is to contain details of every one of the 11 million
children in the country, listing their name, address and gender, as
well as contact details for their GP, school and parents and other carers.
The record will also include contacts with hospital consultants and
other professionals, and could show whether the child has been the subject
of a formal assessment on whether he or she needs extra help.

It will be available to an
estimated 330,000 vetted users. Some of those allowed to check records,
such as head teachers, doctors, youth offender and social workers, are
uncontroversial, but critics have questioned why other potential users,
such as fire and rescue staff, will have access to the database.

ContactPoint was set up after
the official report into the death of Victoria Climbié. Lord
Laming concluded that the eight-year-old’s murder could have been
prevented had there been better communication between professionals.

Regulations governing the
system, which is costing £224 million to build and a further £41
million a year to run, were rushed through parliament without publicity
last month, despite the warning of a House of Lords committee. “The
enormous size of the database and the huge number of probable users
inevitably increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent breaches
of security, and of deliberate misuse of the data (eg, disclosure of
an address with malign intent), which would be likely to bring the whole
scheme into disrepute”, the Lords’ Select Committee on Merits
of Statutory Instruments concluded.

Now local councils have given
warning that changes made to the rules after consultation could leave
the system open to abuse. The Association of Directors of Children’s
Services has written to Christine Goodfellow, the official in charge
of the new database, to register its fears over security.

In addition to its warning
over vetting, the body says that ministers are placing “unreasonable
and perhaps undeliverable expectations on local councils” by asking
them to guarantee the accuracy of data over which they have little control.

Private schools and children’s
rights campaigners have already given warning that the database is open
to misuse. “Unless the system is secure, the result will be that
sensitive information will fall into the hands of potential abusers
of children and traders of information,” a letter signed by the
Independent Schools Council, Privacy International and the Foundation
on Information Policy Research said.

Concerns have been intensified
by the admission that, while every child under 18 in England will have
a record, ministers have allowed some children to be given extra protection.
The “shielding” mechanism will mean that information on
the offspring of some politicians and celebrities could be left off
the main database.

A spokeswoman for the Department
for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) said that shielding would
be available for “children whose circumstances may mean that they,
or others, are at increased risk of harm”. She added: “These
decisions will be taken on a case-by-case basis and will be based on
the level of threat posed if their information becomes more widely available.”

Children’s rights campaigners
and computer security experts say that this amounts to an acknowledgment
that the database will not be secure. “The Government acknowledges
the risks by instituting these protocols on celebrity and vulnerable
children but all children are potentially vulnerable,” Terri Dowty,
of Action on Rights for Children, said.

Ian Brown, a computer security
research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said that the scale
of the database posed huge risks. “When you have got more than
300,000 people accessing this database, it’s just very difficult
to stop the sale of information.”